The
Christian countries of Europe have been rivals of the Muslims from the
very beginning. They never considered the idolatrous nations to be their
enemies capable of posing danger to Christendom in the field of
international politics. But the Muslims did have an international
position. They had established their slates not only in Asia but had also
ruled over Spain in Europe for 800 years and then for 600 had held sway
over Constantinople, which was the capital of eastern Byzantium and other
territories under its suzerainty. The real rivals, therefore, of the
Christians were only Muslims, who had fought great wars with them in the
course of 1400 years, particularly since the Muslims control of Jerusalem
and practically since A.D. 1095 when the two great faiths, Islam and
Christianity had after centuries of argument, decided to resort to—
as a world-renowned historian of civilisation says: "To man's
ultimate arbitrament —
the supreme court of war". When all Christendom was aflame with holy
fervour as never before as it feverishly prepared for the holy war. On the
holy-land of Palestine alone, which was then the bone of contention, as
many as thirteen crusades had been fought in which the allied natives of
Europe had taken part and had at last been defeated. The Turks had to keep
fighting the Christian nations of Europe for 600 years. Christendom was
therefore afraid only of the Muslims against whom it was always intriguing
and hatching conspiracies to create weakness in Muslim politics so that it
might take advantage of it.

So,
when the English, in their greed of conquest, landed on the Indian soil,
here too they found the banner of Muslim power waving in the air. This too
made them consider Muslims as their true rivals and they began to plan to
crush them. In the sight of the English the Muslims did not deserve any
sympathy. The passions for vengeance created by the events of 1857 had
deprived the English of even the human sentiments of justice and equity in
respect of the Muslims. Since the Muslims, in the revolt of 1857 and
earlier, had been in the forefront of every movement opposing the English,
they alone were made the target of wrath after the stabilisation of the
English government. Subsequent to the decline and extinction of the Muslim
power and the stability of the sway of the East India Company over India,
the Christian missions enhanced their activities throughout the country
more fervently and enthusiastically, although the preaching activities in
India had already begun during the Mughal regime itself. A historian of
that era, Khafi Khan has stated: "The Feringhees have mostly
established their colonies in the coastal ports. When anyone from amongst
their subjects dies, they confiscate his effects and, enslaving his young
children, whether they be Hindu or Muslim, christianise them".

The
means and methods the English adopted in propagating Christianity had
spread prodigious misgivings among the Indians.

In
the beginning of the nineteenth century the activities of the Christian
missions encompassed the whole country. The aforesaid Charles Grant was
instrumental in inducing the British Parliament to incorporate provisions
about education and the entry of missionaries in the Charter of 1813. With
this permission a floodgate of missions and their schools, collages,
hospitals and Bible Societies was opened "to redeem the heathens of
India from the darkness in which they dwelt. For this purpose legions
after legions of padres began to come to India and crores of rupees began
to be spent like water. Besides males, a number of women missionaries were
also employed to preach among the Indian women. The people of the
untouchable, scheduled castes of India were much affected by the Christian
preachers, Besides them some other people also, renouncing their ancestral
religions, began to become Christians.

In
1826, Archbishop Heber of the Church of England, after a long missionary
tour of India, submitted a report to the Court of Directors of the East
India Company to the effect that since its political power had been
established in India. And Muslims, Marhattas, Rajputs, Sikhs, all had
submitted to their paramountcy. There was no more left any possibility of
any row or uproar over the preaching of Christianity, Such reports and
statements gave a great fillip to the missionary activities, encouraging
the padres' coming to India and their long sojourns here. Christian
preachers swarmed everywhere and fanned out in the country, laying a
network of preaching activities from cities and towns to villages. These
overzealous raissionaries would not rest content with merely the
description of the merits and virtues of their religion but, under a
pre-planned scheme, used to publish such literature in which the religions
of India. Particularly the Islamic teachings and Islamic culture were
being derided, and the Prophet of Islam, Muslim monarchs and saints were
insulted and affronted. The purpose of these people behind this derision
and detraction most probably was that since the Muslims after their
political decline and debacle had been deprived of their inherent courage,
high-minded-ness and lofty vision. If the virtues and merits of
Christianity and the (supposed) defects and shortcomings of there own
religion and history were presented before them on this occasion. They
would very possibly apostatise and would adopt Christianity and thus the
English would get a chance to rule over India permanently and
complacently.

In
A. D. 1834/A. H. 1250, the famous preacher of the Church of England, Dr.
C. G. Fonder came to India. He was a cleric of German stock and had
proficiency in speaking and writing both the Arabic and Persian languages.
In A. D. 1835/A. H. 1251 he published a book in Persian entitled Mizan
ul-Haq in refutation of Islam.' This is the first book in refutation
of Islam published in India.

The
East India Company whose apparent purpose was trading and the real
objective was the preaching of Christianity and the grabbing of political
power in India, had gradually begun 1o intermeddle in the political,
educational and administrative affairs of the country. With this objective
in mind, Bible Societies had been established at many places, the Bible
had been translated into all the principal languages of the country.
Christian missions had been opened in all the big and small cities and
towns of India, and the officials of the Company and the Christian
missionaries had made a common cause and were preaching Christianity
vigorously. The English people's plan was that somehow the Indians,
particularly the Muslims, should be converted to Christianity so that that
religious zeal that impelled them to hate and oppose the British might be
channelised for stabilising the British government. And thereby the
chances of ruling over India peacefully with the flourishing of
Christianity might be created.

In
short, on the one hand, missionary activities of the padres were current,
mission schools were being opened in which facilities for acquiring
education were being provided, and the officials of the Company were on
their back. Providing all sorts of help and support and, on the other,
above every thing else was the lure of government services. The scheme of
the Company was such that by making the inhabitants of India, particularly
the Muslims, indigent and ignorant, for which all sorts of proper and
1mproper means were being employed. And by luring them to the acquisition
of services, they should be constrained to receive education in Mission
Schools, which were considered then the greatest means for the preaching
of Christianity. But the greatest stumbling block in this path was the
sciences of the Muslims and their love for it. To obviate this the said
education scheme VV'CIS devised in AD 1835/ A.H. 1251 the spirit of which.
According to Lord Macaulay, was to create a class of persons who would be
"Indians in blood and colour, but English in last’s
in opinions, in morals, and in intellects".

This
second weapon of English education and English culture no doubt proved
more successful than the former. It is obvious that this scheme of the
Company was a very noxious and deadly weapon for the Muslims' religious
life, communal traditions and arts and sciences that they could never
bring them selves round to accepting under any circumstance. And while
they had not yet thought out a solution for maintaining their religious
life and communal consciousness, the upheaval of 1857 occurred whose
unsparing ravages and horrible consequences had terrorised hearts,
benumbed brains and withered souls. The whole community was over- clouded
with inertia, insensibility and despondency. The monarchical and ruling
power and glory, wealth and pomp had been finished and the Muslims had
been altogether deprived of the means of livelihood. Indecent habits were
taking root in them day by day and the entire community was falling into
the abyss of ruination and destruction. Disinclination towards education
and alienation from religion were increasing daily; the consciousness of
their own strength and position was dying out. The padres' preaching
activities had made conditions more perplexing and the time was not far
off when the old generation of the Ulema educated in the former seminaries
would have gradually vanished.

These
were the circumstances under which our thinkers and savants had to
perceive that with political decay and debacle and deprivation of
sovereignty, the Muslims' learning, religion and communal life too would
soon fall into serious jeopardy. They were not unaware of this decision of
history that whenever a people have conquered a country and have gained
political domination and sway over its inhabitants. The influences and
characteristics of the victors do not remain confined to the bodies of the
vanquished but go deeper, subjugating the heart and mind. Learning and
thought of latter also with the inevitable result that the vanquished not
only bid adieu to their national customs, national ethos and national
thought and practice. But in accordance with the axiom "the people
follow their kings religion", and due to the continuous process of
attraction and assimilation for a long time, they at last begin to hate
their own traditions, values, thought and practice. And then imitation and
blind following and conformance to the victorious nation become a source
of pride for them.

In
the 600-year-old history of the Muslims in India this was the most
dreadful, delicate and dangerous time. At such a delicate and dangerous
time when the fortune's wheel had brought about a very ruinous state of
affairs for the Muslim community, the most important need of the time for
the protection and survival of the Muslims was the palingenseis of
religious values and establishment of religious schools.

It
has been a great characteristic of our Ulema and Shaikhs that from
religious, academic and jurisprudentially propositions to any branch of
culture, social life, politics and civilisation, they never let the skirt
of the Islamic Shari'ah slip from their hands. They never laid down arms
before the rival powers in any corner. The nineteenth century A. D. was a
great challenge to the beliefs, thoughts and views of the Muslims. Western
arts and sciences and European culture were engulfing the whole world like
a great deluge. The lamp of the Mughal sultanate in India had been snuffed
out. The lustre and glitter of modem science and technology had dazzled
the eyes and overawed the minds. But the noble Ulema continuously remained
engaged in facing this challenge. On the one hand they prepared such a
defensive fortification by establishing seminaries everywhere in the
country that it secured the Muslims to a great extent from the
consequences of their political defeat. And on the other Maulana
Rahmatullah Keranvi, Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi, Maulana Abul
Mansoor and Dr. Wazir Khan, etc. put up a vigorous fight with full courage
and intrepidity against the onslaught of the Christian missionaries. And
did not let their preachers dream of converting the Muslims of India to
Christianity come true.

The
methods of propagating Christianity adopted by the Christian missionaries
in those days can be divided into four categories.

1.Mission
schools
in which the official language of the Government (English) was taught. The
teaching of the Bible was compulsory in every such school. It is needless
to point out that education is the greatest means of propagating any
religion. The thought and mind of students who, due to young age and
inexperience, are simple-minded and innocent of religious information can
be diverted from their ancestral traditions and values. And can be easily
impressed through education, and one's own thoughts and views can be
implanted and indurate in their raw, malleable and receptive hearts and
minds. It had become a common belief in those days that by reading English
children used to bid adieu to their own religion and become "Kristan"
(i.e., Christian). Hence the Muslims particularly refrained from admitting
their children to mission schools and opposed the English education tooth
and nail. Khwaja Ghulam Al-Hasany Panipati has stated: "Khwaja Altaf
Husain Hali told my mother about me: Send him to Delhi so that living with
me he may acquire English education'. My mother refused saying: 'by giving
him English education t don't want to make him materialist and
irreligious"?

This
was a safeguard of sorts used by the Muslims against the Christian
Mission; the Ulema were in the forefront in creating this consciousness
among the Muslims.

2.The
mission hospitals
too ware mode a means of preaching Christianity and efforts were made to
impress the patients in these hospitals. This method continues to some
extent even now. Hence the allopathic system of medicine was also opposed.
The Muslims, for their medical treatment, used to resort mostly to the
Unani and Ayurvedic Systems of medicine and herbal therapy. A great
advantage obtained from this reaction was that the Unani and the
indigenous Systems are still extant in India and are progressing day by
day.

3.Consisted
in speaking and sermonising,
the third method of the Christian Mission consisted in speaking and
sermonising in public gatherings and in holding polemical disputations.
The Ulema broke lance with the Christian preachers in this field too and
with their forceful arguments repulsed the Christian missionaries
incessantly so thoroughly that all their schemes were completely
demolished. In this connection the names of Delhi, Agra and Shahjahanpur
can be particularly mentioned. In 1271/1853, at Agra, the greatest
Christian missionary of the time, Dr. C, G. Fonder was so reduced to a
nonplus by the incontrovertible academic arguments and clinching
objections of Maulana Rahmatullah Keranvi and his colleague, Dr. Wazir
Khan, that “Exposition
of Truth", with its cogent and unarguable arguments and irrefutable
proofs, is that soon after its publication in Arabic its translations in
six European languages had been published about the same time.

There
is no doubt about it that the Muslims in India had been defeated
politically by the English but this is also a fact that the eminent Ulema
never gave a chance to the Christian padres to succeed in the academic and
ideal fields. On every front of the preaching of Christianity they went on
defeating the padres without cease, so much so that the Christian
missionaries had to restrict the sphere of their feverish activities and
had to give up at last that aspect of preaching Christianity. Particularly
in which there used to be aggressive attacks on other religions. In short
the Darul-Uloom Deoband and its elders protected the religion at a time
when its lamp was about to be extinguished; they tried their level best to
make a short work of every internal and external mischief and defended
Islam in every possible way.

Besides
detective protection there was also need of positive steps at that time,
and in this connection the first step was the establishment of religious
schools. Accordingly, the Darul-Uloom Deoband was established in
1283/1866. A few months later Madrasah Mazahir-e-Uloom came up in
Saharanpur and then such Madaris followed one after another at Thana
Bhavan, Muzaffar Nagar, Anbattha, Gulaothi, Meerut, etc., and now their
number keeps multiplying day by day. In those crucial and critical days
the strategy of the Elias of Deoband, particularly of Hazrat Nanautavi,
consisted in the establishment of seminaries only. Wherever he went he
tried to establish Madrasahs —
at Moradabad, Anbatha, Gulaothi, etc. Wherever he had faithful followers
he used to insist upon them in letters and personally to found and start
Madrasahs. By this persuasion and stimulus a number of Madrasahs were
established, as though, in a way, he —
Hazrat Nanautavi —
deserves to be called the Founder of Madrasahs in India.

To
transmit the correct Islamic beliefs to the rank and file, printing
presses were started in which, besides the holy Quran, other religious
books too were being printed, some of which were in refutation of
Christianity. Through these books that came out of the presses the
religious knowledge of the common run of Muslims kept increasing day by
day, they not only derived satisfaction from them but also got armed with
the well-argued ripostes and squelches to the objections raised by the
Christian missions. The Ulema of the Darual-Uloom supplied the Muslims
with literature consisting of thousands of books; thus a large number of
books on various Islamic topics were published from there. The teaching
and publication of Islamic sciences combined raised an insuperable
obstacle in the way of the Christian missions and hence those results of
the fervent preaching efforts of the missions the padres were desirous of
could not ensue.

The
force and intrepidity with which, first of all, Hazrat Nanautavi, and then
Maulana Murtaza Hasan Chandpuri and Maulana Sanaullah Amritsari from
amongst the graduates of the Darul-Uloom Deoband, contended with the
preaching of Christianity. And also with the onslaught of Christianity and
Arya Samaj which had begun in the last phase of the thirteenth century
Hijri, is a glorious exploit in the history of the Darul- Uloom, Deoband.

Similarly,
whenever during the British regime the Government tried to make any law
which could have clashed with the Islamic Shari'ah, the Ulema of Deoband
opposed it tooth and nail and gave proof of their devotion to duty. On the
occasion of the Sarda Act and the Waqf Bill they did not hesitate at all
in presenting the Islamic point of view with daring and clarity.